


Three Times Owen, Tosh, and Ianto Slept Together, and One Time They Were Caught At It

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Drunk Sex, Friends With Benefits, Missing Scene, Multi, Team Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24839578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: From post-season-one to late season two. Sex optional.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Owen Harper/Ianto Jones/Toshiko Sato
Comments: 14
Kudos: 97





	Three Times Owen, Tosh, and Ianto Slept Together, and One Time They Were Caught At It

**1\. Drunken angry comfort sex**

"Two weeks," Owen said. "Two sodding weeks. Jack bloody fucking Harkness. Serve his undead arse right if we all up and quit while he's gone. Let him find some new sods to mess about with."

"Keep it down, we're in public," Ianto muttered at him above the pub noise.

"Oh, piss _off_ , Jones."

"You two are fun tonight," Tosh murmured into her vodka and tonic.

She'd had three or four already. Owen didn't know where she was putting it on that tiny frame. They were all half pissed already, especially Ianto, who had been drinking steadily and systematically with a dedication that Owen couldn't help but admire.

Gwen was home with her bloke, because of course she was. Owen missed her desperately, missed the curve of her hips and the hunger of her mouth, and most of all the oblivion of it -- just fucking, enough to forget everything for five sodding minutes. He could've hooked up with some bird for a quick shag, could probably have his pick of the entire pub ... but he didn't _want_ to, was the hell of it. He hadn't, since Diane. He wanted sex as much as ever, just didn't want it ... like _that._ Gwen at least was familiar. But she'd cut things off weeks ago, even before Jack left. 

The bitter, angry part of Owen wanted to push for it anyway, push and push until he either got her back or broke something between them irrevocably -- and most likely the latter. But he hadn't; he wasn't even sure why. And so here he was, getting plastered on a Tuesday night with the remnant of Torchwood that didn't have a social life and hadn't fucked off to bloody Alpha Centauri or wherever.

"We are such a bunch of sodding losers, aren't we?" he said. Tosh looked up from her drink. "Look at us. Gwen's at least got a _life._ What have we got? Diane fucked off into the Rift to get away from me, Tosh's girlfriend ended up in the sun after trying to kill us all -- Ianto's girlfriend also tried to kill us all, I'm sensing a pattern here ..."

"Don't talk about Lisa," Ianto said. His voice was perfectly steady, his hand on the glass a little _too_ steady. It figured, Owen thought, that Ianto would get drunk the way he did everything else, with complete self-control.

"Really? Are you in charge now? Lisa. Lisa, Lisa, Lisa --"

"Leave it," Ianto said, his voice dark.

Tosh looked up with an abrupt flare of anger. "Owen, don't be such a .... a _wanker_."

"Ooh. There is some fire in there after all. Talk dirty to me again."

Tosh looked down at the tabletop, and Ianto said, "Leave her alone."

"Leave her alone, leave you alone -- who's bloody left to talk to? Maybe I should just go home."

"Maybe you should," Ianto said.

"Oh, that's what you want, is it?" He wasn't sure why he was spoiling for a fight so badly. He just wanted to hit something. Himself, maybe, but Ianto would do instead, especially if Ianto hit back. Owen wanted to break through that surface veneer of calm self-control, get a fucking reaction for a change. "Bet you loved it when Jack threw me out, huh? Well, too sodding bad, I'm back to stay and Himself isn't around to kick me out again or give it to you up the arse like usual --"

Ianto shoved back his chair with an abrupt, furious movement and stood up. A slight sway betrayed how drunk he actually was. "You need to stop talking now," he said, low and fierce.

Owen bounced to his feet as well. The room spun and steadied. Fuck it, he wasn't even wasted yet, at least not nearly enough; he hadn't _begun_ to get wasted yet. "Yeah? You want to _make_ me, tea boy?"

"Stop it, you two," Tosh protested. "They'll have us thrown out."

"You don't know anything about me and Jack," Ianto said, looking Owen in the eyes.

"Yeah? I know enough, don't I? I know he left you, the same way Diane left me -- who's feeling high and mighty now, huh?"

Tosh was on her feet now too. "Stop it. Sit back down, both of you."

"It's always about you, isn't it, Owen?" Ianto said, leaning forward across the small table to push himself into Owen's space. "It's about you, and _your_ pain, never mind how the rest of us feel, never mind that we've all lost things, lost people too --"

"Oh, yeah, and look at you over there with _your_ heart bleeding for the rest of us, isn't it, when Jack _left you,_ and you're still defending him like you can't even see what a selfish arsehole he is --"

"Stop talking shit, Owen," Ianto said between his teeth.

"Oh, you curse now, do you? Like the rest of us ordinary mortals? What, I can't talk about Lisa and I can't talk about sodding Jack Harness -- what _can_ I talk about, in your esteemed opinion, oh high and might tea boy of Torchwood Three?"

Ianto jerked forward in a way that suggested Owen was about to find himself on the receiving end of a fistfight. Owen grinned.

"Stop!" Tosh half-yelled, grabbing each of them by a fistful of jacket.

At which point the bouncer showed up and kicked them out.

*

"I told you," Tosh muttered. It was raining lightly outside, bedraggling her hair and soaking the shoulders of Ianto's annoyingly posh jacket. "I said you were going to get us thrown out, but no one listens to me."

"I seem to recall it was _you_ got us thrown out, in the end," Owen snapped back. She didn't say anything. "Fine, you were right and we were wrong. Happy?"

Tosh huddled miserably. She wasn't wearing a jacket, and the rain was making her shirt cling in a way that was ... uh. Hard not to notice. Also, she looked cold.

"Here," Ianto said, and slung off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders before Owen could get around to taking his off to offer.

Tosser. 

Just for that, Owen put an arm around her. Tosh looked up at him with a startled expression, wide-eyed and unexpectedly open. Gently, shyly, she slipped an arm around his waist.

"So now what?" Owen asked, looking away from that liquid, wide-eyed look. She was very warm against his side, he couldn't help noticing. Why _hadn't_ he slept with Tosh, anyway? Right now he couldn't think of a single reason. "Want to find somewhere else to get wasted? Anyone?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Tosh said, "I don't know if I have much more left in me tonight. I'm sorry."

"Another quality night out for team Torchwood," Owen said. He ought to let go but he didn't really want to. "And since Ianto's clearly not speaking to me --"

"I shouldn't have said that about Diane," Ianto said quietly. His hands were shoved in his trouser pockets, shoulders hunched; he'd pulled away from them a bit, as if they were their own unit, with Ianto set apart. His shirt was getting soaked now, too.

"What?" Owen was too angry and too drunk to reroute his mental processes immediately. "What the -- are you _apologizing_ to me? For what?"

"I said that to you, that day -- about Diane going into the Rift to leave you. I shouldn't have."

"Bloody ... you also _shot_ me, and I don't see you apologizing for that."

"Well," and there was something like a smile on Ianto's face now. "I'm not sorry for _that."_

"You absolute towering wanker," Owen said, and he swayed into Ianto -- okay, maybe he was more drunk than he thought -- and slammed his lips onto Ianto's, open-mouthed and angry.

It was mostly just to keep the fight going; there was no way in hell he was going to let Ianto apologize to him, in the middle of all of this, not when they were getting rained on and had just been thrown out of one of the few drinking holes adjacent to the Hub that they hadn't already been thrown out of for generally alien-related reasons.

(Jack said that using Retcon to get bar owners to let them back in was, quote-unquote, an abuse of Torchwood resources. Fucking Jack Harkness.)

He wanted Ianto to hit him for it. To push him down to ... to punish him for all of this.

Instead Ianto kissed him back, mouth opening under his. It was fierce and painful, but not in a bad way: teeth clashing together, Ianto's lips shockingly soft. And for just a minute Owen's thoughts emptied out; there was nothing but an echoing silence in the screaming hell of his mind.

He'd dragged Tosh along with him, since he was still holding her, and he became slowly aware of that: Tosh pressed against his side, not really doing anything, just getting carried along for the ride. Owen wrenched away, breaking the kiss, and jerked his gaze away before he could find out what was in Ianto's eyes. He hadn't wanted ... whatever that was. But fuck him if he didn't want it again.

Instead, he looked down at Tosh. His lips felt hot and swollen. "You want a go, Tosh, since we're all doing this now?"

"I, er ... what?" Tosh said faintly, staring up at him. Her eyes were very big and very soft.

"A snog, Tosh, as Gwen would say, because Gwen is twelve." And with that, he leaned in and kissed her.

There was rainwater on her lips, and lip gloss flavored like cherries. It was strange, kissing her immediately after kissing Ianto; he could still taste Ianto, and the whiskey Ianto had been drinking, and the sharp taste of Tosh's mixed drinks.

Her lips were closed at first, but then she opened her mouth, and let him in. He closed his eyes. Rainwater ran down his face, too cold to be tears.

It was Tosh who pulled away. "Owen," she gasped out, blinking rapidly. "You .... we're all drunk, this is ... a bad idea. You're not going to want this when you're sober."

There was every possibility she was right, but right now he felt like he was teetering on a familiar precipice leading to the exact kind of self-destructive bad decisions that he'd always been absolute balls at resisting. Ianto was still so close that Owen could feel the heat of his body. Just watching them, his expression hard to read as usual. And Owen still wanted to wipe away that smug self-possession, see him _react_ for a change.

"Your turn now, Ianto," Owen said. "You and her. Go."

If the first kiss wasn't the point when the entire mood turned, this should have been, and yet it wasn't. Ianto leaned in and then hesitated, with his lips inches from Tosh's. "Do you want," he began, because of course he was a fucking gentleman even when half drunk with his boyfriend/fuckbuddy two weeks gone, but Tosh answered by opening her mouth and leaning forward. 

There was an intense sweetness to their kiss that Owen couldn't help being jealous of, and the jealousy made him hot. _He_ didn't have that, wasn't sure if he was capable of it -- not since Katie, since Diane. All he seemed to have in him was a tangled mix of anger and horniness that registered itself in the desire for a good cathartic shag, but not ... not _this,_ the gentleness and almost innocent nature of it.

Tosh still had her arm around Owen's waist; she seemed to have forgotten that. Owen didn't mind. He found himself riveted, watching them from much too close, and when they separated and Tosh stroked her teeth over Ianto's lower lip, Owen said, "Let's fuck."

He was a little surprised when nobody said no.

*

They went back to Ianto's place because it was closest, and right now that seemed like the most important consideration. Owen hadn't seen Ianto's flat before -- hadn't actually wasted a single thought wondering about it, and he wasn't seeing much of it now, except to vaguely note that it wasn't very big and they kept running into furniture as they stumbled inside, kissing each other and tearing off random, sodden bits of clothing.

"Why do you have so fucking many chairs," Owen complained, ripping off his jeans while hopping on one leg and nursing a barked shin.

"Do you ever stop talking for one single minute?"

"Shut up," Owen said, and grabbed him by his half-unbuttoned shirt and pulled him in to make him do exactly that.

It hadn't happened to him very often, more's the pity, but he'd always gotten off on the chaotic nature of sex between more than two people. It couldn't have been more different from the fierce, intimate tenderness with Diane, or even the intensity of sex with Gwen, and right now he really needed that. Just something _different,_ something to wash out his mind to white noise and make everything stop for a while.

And ... they were fucking _gorgeous,_ these two ... weren't they? He hadn't realized that Torchwood Three's glorified butler was hiding that toned body under those staid three-piece suits, and he'd never even stopped to think about Tosh's gorgeous breasts with their perfect brown nipples and the rest of Tosh's ... everything. 

They tumbled into Ianto's bed, on rumpled sheets that it occurred to Owen, the thought slowly surfacing from his mentally sodden condition, might have been last fucked on by Ianto and Jack. God help him, in his current state he thought that was hot.

"My bed's bigger," he couldn't help pointing out.

"Shut up," Ianto murmured, and closed his lips over Owen's, but it wasn't angry, it was strangely warm and affectionate. Then Tosh seized him by the shoulders and pushed herself down onto him and thinking stopped being a thing that was happening for a while.

*

Owen came back to himself slowly. They were all tangled up together, arms and legs twined around each other, sticky and drying off and luxuriously relaxed. Tosh's breath whispered along his neck. Ianto was on her other side, and Tosh could be a deep sleeper, as Owen had learned from waking her up when she napped in the Hub, so it was relatively easy to slide out of her arms.

He kept glancing back at them, while he found his clammy jeans and forced himself back into one leg at a time. Ianto was spooned against Tosh, his bigger arm over her waist. Owen found himself overwhelmed with a surge of tenderness for both of them that caught him off guard. 

God, he hoped he hadn't broken anything too badly. He was coming down from the alcohol high, and now he just felt headachy and regretful. What had seemed like a good idea to his angry, drunken self was seeming a lot less of a good idea now, but ... wouldn't be the first time, would it.

He shook his head, and slipped off quietly, letting himself out of Ianto's door into the rainy night.

* * *

**2\. We're all gonna die so why not?**

_This is a bad idea, a bad idea, a bad idea,_ drummed the mantra in the back of Tosh's brain, but it didn't make it to her lips because her lips were on Ianto's and Owen was frantically unbuttoning her shirt.

Any minute now, the sleeper agents could reach the buried missiles and everything would wash out white in an explosion that would trigger the war that would end everything.

And all she could think about was Ianto kissing her, and Owen's warm hands on her breasts.

She wasn't even sure if Owen remembered that they'd had sex that one time after the pub, after Jack left. He'd never mentioned it, never even acted different the next day. _She_ remembered it, though -- in blurred flashes -- she had been pretty drunk, and she'd never had sex with more than one person before, so it was all kind of a haze of arms and legs and mouths. But it was a _good_ haze. She had lived in that memory for a long time.

And now it was happening again, and she was fully sober to savor every last moment.

She trailed kisses down Ianto's jawline and began struggling with his tie. Owen came to her rescue ... sort of; he was now trying to undo the knot while Ianto talked him through it and Owen made frustrated noises and Tosh, peeling off her own skirt and panties, found herself laughing.

"... over, not under -- Owen, have you never _seen_ a Windsor knot before?"

"Excuse me if it's different doing it on someone else, most birds don't wear one, you know --"

God help her, she was going to be so _angry_ if the world blew up and robbed her of these people.

She knelt and undid Owen's belt while Owen was still struggling with Ianto's clothes, and Owen muttered a heartfelt curse that Tosh knew to take as a compliment as she pulled everything down, underpants and all.

The floor of the Hub was no bed, but they fell into a heap of discarded clothes, and no one really much cared.

*

"Oh God," Owen said, his head jerking up. Tosh had buried her nose in his neck, just breathing him in. Ianto was tangled around Owen's other side. "How long have we -- have they tried to -- Did I _fall asleep?"_ He sounded baffled, as if falling asleep after sex was something that happened to other people. Given how he'd rushed out the door the other time, maybe it was.

"Well, it's better than you running off like the last time," Ianto said, and then he sat up abruptly, dropping Owen. "Jack."

"Fuck," Owen said, propping himself up on an elbow. They were tangled up in a nest made mostly of their clothes. "Did we fuck things up for you with Jack? Shit, mate, I didn't think about --"

"No, I mean he's going to be back soon, since we appear to not be dead. Jack. And Gwen. And anyone else with them."

"Oh God," Owen said again, and Tosh scrambled for her clothes.

"To answer your question," Ianto said, as he sat on the floor and pulled on trousers, socks, and shoes in an impressively fast and efficient reverse strip-tease, "Jack and I are fine. Jack can have sex with other people if he wants to. I can have sex with other people if I, er ..." He was not quite looking at either of them. "... find anyone I want to have sex with. It's not a big thing."

"That's absolutely what you want to hear after sex," Owen said lightly, pulling on his sweatshirt. Ianto opened his mouth. Owen twisted around and caught his shoulder, a light brush of fingers. "Stop it, I hear what you're saying. I'm glad, mate. Tosh, you okay, love?"

She nodded and let Owen pull her up to her feet. She felt dazed, a little sleepy, and very relaxed. Clearly they weren't dead, so things must have worked out on Jack and Gwen's end. The past half-hour or so was a kaleidoscope of memories rotating through her mind, a very nice one, and Owen's hand felt warm on hers. He let go and turned to the computers, and she flexed her hand a bit sadly, and then turned around to offer a reciprocal hand up to Ianto.

"Thank you," Ianto murmured, and smiled at her. 

Toss worked her panties on underneath her skirt, and watched as Ianto buttoned up his shirt and carefully folded down the cuffs. They couldn't just ... go back to being co-workers after this, could they? she wondered, glancing over at Owen. But the answer was staring her in the face: Owen buried in the readouts, checking results, numbers scrolling up the screen. 

She turned to Ianto, needing -- something, some last brief indication that they'd had something here, that it wasn't just ... nothing. Meaningless sex, because at the end of the world, anyone would have done.

"You ever notice how it's always Owen who suggests these things?" Ianto murmured. His smile was warm, that quirky sideways smile that he'd been showing more often as he came out of the depression that had shadowed him since Lisa's death.

"I can hear you," Owen said loudly from the computer.

Tosh smiled, and her fallen heart lifted a little. When she stretched up, Ianto gave her a last quick kiss. He tasted like Owen.

* * *

**3\. Comfort sex (minus the actual sex)**

Owen's place was about what Ianto would have expected, large and impersonal with huge windows looking out on the harbor. It was expensive and showy and the kind of place that he could absolutely see the Owen he'd first met, the selfish playboy, bringing women to impress them.

It was also impersonal and cold, softened only slightly by random items (laundry, books, medical journals) flung onto every piece of furniture. It didn't look like a place a person came to relax; it looked like a place that had been picked out on a website, and only occasionally lived in, possibly by university students.

"So I'm a rubbish housekeeper," Owen said, seeing Ianto looking at the multiple T-shirts heaped on the sofa in front of the enormous window. Owen reached for one, started to pick it up and then dropped it.

He looked tired -- exhausted, even. Which was a contradiction in terms, since Owen couldn't sleep these days, technically speaking. But it didn't seem to stop him from getting tired; it just made him tense and grouchy about it.

"It's all right, Owen," Tosh said from the kitchen. She set a bag on the countertop, containing beer and tea and some packets of crisps; Owen had warned them that there was nothing in the flat for living people to eat or drink.

"You two didn't have to see me back here," Owen said. He flopped on the sofa, and then he just wilted, throwing an arm over his face.

Ianto sat on the end of the sofa. "No, we wanted to," he said. "Idiot." There was no heat in it.

Owen huffed out something like a laugh, and didn't take his arm off his face.

Ianto reached out carefully and settled his hand on Owen's wrist. It was a strange experience, touching Owen these days, the cool, almost rubbery feeling of his skin. But it was surprisingly easy to get used to. It was like the way he'd got used to the metal embedded in Lisa's flesh, stopped noticing it, even. Some people had braces or crutches or implanted bits. Some had twisted limbs. Owen was room temperature. You stopped thinking about it.

He rubbed his fingers over what would have been Owen's pulse point, if Owen still had a pulse.

From the kitchen, Tosh said, "Ianto, do you want a beer? Owen, do you mind?"

"Don't mind," Owen said, his voice quiet.

He was so much ... softer, sometimes, since he'd come back from the dead. It wasn't a case of Owen having left something behind in the darkness, no matter what Owen seemed to think about it. Ianto had seen plenty of flashes of the obstreperous arsehole that he'd come to know and appreciate and, against all odds, to care about, over the past couple of years. Owen was still Owen.

But he was an Owen who had lost everything, who found himself trapped in a suddenly fragile body, all his former vices denied to him, and was slowly building himself back up again.

Ianto didn't really know what to do about that. He'd had no idea how much Owen _meant_ \-- to him, to the team -- until Owen wasn't there, and then they'd got him back, but what they got back was a quiet, scared, miserable, subdued Owen. Ianto had watched Owen claw his way back out of that dark place over the last few weeks, one careful toehold at a time, and didn't want to admit either how much he admired it, or how much he related to it, because of his own state of mind following Lisa's death. Owen had to be feeling similarly, though it wasn't a lover whose death he was grieving; it was his own. The loss of himself, and his body, and everything that had made him, _him._

Or at least, what Owen thought made him _him._ What made you human. The ability to eat and drink and sleep and piss and shag.

What Ianto had realized over the last few weeks, what he was fairly sure they all had, was that Owen was just Owen, no matter what he could or couldn't do, and they'd lost him once and got him back, and they'd do anything not to lose him again.

Even if the biggest danger to Owen right now was actually Owen himself.

All of this went through his mind as he sat and rubbed his fingers in slow smooth circles over Owen's cool, dry, slightly yielding wrist. Not quite dead and not alive, more like a doll's flesh than a human's. It would probably have bothered him if it hadn't been Owen.

Owen opened his eyes. His eyes hadn't changed at all, brown and full of expression. "Can I ..." He took a sort of breath, a shallow gasp that was all the breathing he really could do these days. Ianto stilled his hand, but Owen shook his head and closed his eyes again. "Never mind."

That was Owen wanting more, not less. Ianto squeezed his wrist gently.

"What am I missing over here?" Tosh asked, sitting on Ianto's other side. She leaned on Ianto's shoulder, a light warm pressure, as she set their beers on the coffee table. Her warm weight felt indescribably good. It wasn't that he was touch-starved these days, like he had once been; Jack was ... _Jack,_ and Ianto slept and loved and woke and had amazing sex and was fulfilled in a way that he refused to measure against anything else.

And yet, he appreciated this more than he could say, the warmth that had grown between him and his teammates. They had not just forgiven him, but taken him back in, when he had lost everything and hadn't known that anyone would or could.

No matter what happened with Jack, he would always owe them everything for that.

Tosh reached past him to lay her hand alongside his on Owen's wrist. "How are you doing?" she asked.

"Tired," Owen said. "If that makes any sense. I don't get tired. I _can't_ get tired."

"Your mind still can," Tosh said. She sounded distant and thoughtful, and _god,_ it was hot; Ianto had always been weak for smart people. Lisa had been sharp as a whip. Jack was, too. "People don't only need sleep for the physical body's rest. Clearly, you don't need to sleep, because otherwise you would have suffered the psychological effects long before now." Her fingertips had matched rhythm with Ianto's, a light stroking motion up his arm and back down. "But you can still be tired. You're human. People get tired."

"Human," Owen said, and laughed softly and unhappily.

"Bed," Ianto declared. He'd barely tasted his beer, but he left it where it was; he and Tosh got Owen over to the bed instead. Owen really did seem exhausted, so tired he was half out of it. They had to help him strip down to his underwear.

"Just what everyone wants to see, a naked dead guy," Owen muttered. "You know what the worst part is about being this tired? I _can't sleep."_

"Does it make a difference if you're lying down?" Ianto asked.

"Ugh," Owen said, plunking down facefirst in the pillows.

Ianto stripped off his trousers and shoes and jacket. Tosh looked across Owen, her expression a slightly caught-in-the-headlights one, and then stood and stripped off her trousers as well.

"What's happening?" Owen asked, raising his head at the small rustles. "What are you two doing? Oh god, yes, have sex in the bed with me while I can't join in. That's fun for all."

"Settle down," Ianto said. He hesitated, sitting on the edge of the bed. They'd been naked with each other exactly twice before, the first time drunk, the second time in the middle of the Hub. This time was so much more deliberate that it felt different, like he was crossing a series of small bridges and could never go back.

But Owen needed this. And maybe the rest of them did, too. Ianto slid under the covers and planted a hand on Owen's cool back.

"I can't sleep," Owen said. His tone was plaintive, with a desperate, furious current of darkness underneath. "I can't _sleep,_ you understand that, right?"

"We know that," Tosh said, and she slipped into bed on Owen's other side, like an indescribably beautiful sylph in her underwear and nothing else. Ianto felt the brush of her warm arm against his own hand and Owen's cold flesh as she put her arms around Owen. 

"So I get to lie here being sexually frustrated," Owen said, and his tone was just so _Owen_ that Ianto found himself laughing quietly. 

Ianto rolled over and put his arms around Owen, hand brushing light over Tosh's warm shoulder. Owen, he reminded himself, wasn't Lisa; he wasn't Suzie or Diane or Katie or any of the people they'd lost. And keeping him here might be a tenuous thing, but Ianto would take it, because it meant that he _was_ here with them, for just one day more.

"We know you can't sleep," Ianto murmured, and he was pleased to feel Owen shiver a little at the sensation of Ianto's breath on the side of his neck. Owen still felt things, to an extent, and he still reacted; he just didn't want to admit it. "You can't sleep, but maybe you can rest."

Owen muttered something, too low to hear. And then he was still ... too still, really, for a human; there wasn't even a pulse.

But it was still Owen, and that was what mattered.

Ianto had his hand pressed against Tosh's shoulder, and she put her own hand over his. Her other arm was wrapped around Owen; Ianto could feel it, a slice of warmth against Owen's cold skin.

He could also feel Owen warming slowly against them. It wasn't meaningful, in the grand scheme of things. It wasn't like they could hug him back to life. 

But it turned out that, if they held him long enough, he ended up absorbing some of their body heat, eventually feeling warm, not dead, against them. And in their current world of tiny victories turned large, it felt like something.

"Asleep?" Ianto murmured against Owen's cheek.

"Of bloody course not." But it was murmured in a relaxed undertone. 

Ianto closed his eyes and pressed his face against Owen's, his skin against Owen's. Tosh's hand tangled lightly in his hair; he could tell she was holding on just as tightly from the other side. You couldn't hold back Death with sheer willpower. He knew that better than anyone. But you could seize moments and store them against the future.

* * *

**+1. After the Wedding**

It was long after midnight by the time an entire venue full of Retconned, dead-to-the-world wedding guests were all comfortably installed in the upstairs bedrooms (they'd sleep 'til afternoon, Jack figured, then wake with headaches and only the haziest memories of the wedding that hopefully didn't include aliens or the bride's pregnancy). By the time the remains of the fight were cleaned up, including one (1) dead wedding guest, the alien body parts from the barn, and bits and pieces of alien cocoon, it was closing on dawn.

They were all bone-tired, half asleep, and a little bit tipsy. Owen couldn't possibly be drunk, but he was as punchy as the rest of them, probably from a combination of fatigue and a sort of contact high from the others. A little earlier, Jack had come in from burying pieces of alien cocoon in the pasture to find the rest of Torchwood Three in the middle of a confetti fight, Tosh shrieking with her cleavage full of confetti and Ianto laughing as he tried to fend off Owen, who was trying to shove fistfuls of it down his collar. As if Jack could resist the urge to join in something like _that_ , and now they were all picking it out of their hair and clothes; the damn stuff went everywhere. (Jack was looking forward to playing Hunt the Confetti with Ianto later.)

But just for a minute, it had caught him off guard, seeing them like that. It was almost the same feeling as when he'd come back after being gone and found that, in his absence, they had all knit together into a seamless whole. Except ... there had been a certain sense of exclusion then, a feeling that he'd _missed something._ This time, he'd had to stand there in the doorway for a minute or two, just soaking it in. Seeing them laugh, seeing them _happy_ ... 

Joy wasn't something that came along at Torchwood all that often.

The whole operation was winding down now, getting into the last of the cleanup, the final details. Jack had collected all the guests' phones to check for pictures in case anyone had one of the newer models with a camera, but the actual detail work of going through the phones' hard drives could be done back at the Hub. Ianto was idly pushing a broom, cleaning up the last of the glass from the shattered windows earlier. Someone had turned the music back on; they'd been cuing it up throughout the night, someone starting it again whenever the disc changer ran out.

"Ianto," Tosh said, and Jack looked over from sorting phones into plastic bags to see her tugging on Ianto's arm. "Do you want to dance?"

It didn't take much; Ianto was too tired to put up any resistance. He went with her, leaning into her, smiling into her hair as they spun around the room. Jack was captivated. They were sleepy and graceful and beautiful. He had a lovely team.

And it was a very danceable song. Jack tore his gaze away from them, looked around to see what Owen was up to, and found him propping up a wall, watching them dance with a faintly wistful look on his face. Jack left the phones piled on the table and went over.

"Dance with me?"

"Oh, God, no, really?" Owen complained, but he let Jack take his chilly fingers and lead him out onto the dance floor. After a moment's wordless struggle over Jack taking the lead in the dance, he just relaxed, leaning into it, his head drooping against Jack's chest.

Jack spun him slowly around the dance floor, with Owen half-drowsing on him; he knew Owen wasn't in danger of falling asleep, _couldn't_ sleep, not really, but Owen was relaxed and pliable anyway, in a very un-Owen-like kind of way, going complacently along with Jack's movements. Jack was tired too; no rest for the weary, but at least this evening had a fairly upbeat ending, compared to their usual missions. He dropped his head to rest his cheek against Owen's hair.

"Christ, Harkness, stop sniffing my head, ya pervert."

Jack laughed softly. Over the top of Owen's head, he caught Ianto's eye as Ianto swayed against Tosh, and Ianto smiled at him sleepily over the top of Tosh's head. There was nothing jealous in it, just a kind of simple, uncomplicated happiness. Jack grinned back at him, and thought pleasant thoughts of a sleepy Ianto curled up against him, warm and willing.

"Want to trade partners?" Jack asked.

"Oh, sure, why not," Owen said complacently.

... which really _should_ have tipped him off, but he didn't catch on until they glided up to Tosh and Ianto, and Owen slid into their clinch and then Jack found a tired Tosh handed off onto him, while Owen gripped Ianto's hands and tossed Jack a cheery smirk and spun off with a vaguely disgruntled-looking Ianto.

"Hi," Tosh said sleepily, tipping her face back to look up into Jack's.

"Hi, sweetheart," Jack said, and kissed her on the full bloom of her lips. She smiled back at him, tired and happy. She was light on her feet, graceful, an exquisite dancer even in her exhausted state.

Meanwhile Owen and Ianto were having ... issues; it probably was no surprise that they couldn't seem to agree on who was going to lead. Whenever Jack and Tosh spun past them, Jack heard muttered profanity and at one point it looked like they were somewhere closer to a wrestling grapple than a dancer's grip. At the point when it became apparent that they were deliberately trying to trip each other, Jack was about to intervene, but then Owen actually did manage to get his feet tangled around Ianto's and they went down in a large pile of curtains that had been pulled down earlier in the cleanup operation to be scanned for alien bloodstains. Both of them were laughing now, so that was probably all right.

"No offense," Tosh said, her words obscured with a jaw-cracking yawn, "but I'm about off my feet."

"I think we all are." The song had ended, but Jack waltzed her over anyway. Neither Ianto nor Owen looked like they really wanted to get up, both of them flopped in the heap of curtains. When Jack started to put down Tosh between them, Ianto noticed him and sat up abruptly, trying to smooth down his jacket and brush confetti out of his hair. 

"The grounds still need to be swept for traces of alien blood," Ianto said. He took a breath that sounded like it was struggling not to become a yawn. "Need to check the phones --" 

"Ianto, sod _off_ , mate," Owen muttered, trying to poke at his thigh and accidentally getting Tosh instead. "Oh, sorry, sweetheart."

Jack crouched down. "There's no rush on any of it. All of them will be asleep until afternoon at the earliest."

"Yeah," Owen said in a resigned tone, "and _I_ don't sleep at all." He rolled over and sat up, carefully removing Tosh's hand from his arm. "You two stay here. What needs doing -- the phones, yeah?"

"Just bag them to take back to Torchwood. I'll do the grounds sweep and bring the SUV around."

For his own part, Jack had gone through tiredness and out the other side. There was a certain crisp energy to the world in these quiet hours before dawn. Light had begun to show along the edge of the world by the time Jack had gone ahead and done the grounds sweep, checked the barn again for anything they'd missed, brought the car around and went back for the half-bagged-up mobile phones.

It was totally quiet in the abandoned dance hall, which he soon realized was because the pile of curtains was empty. The phones had been all bagged neatly and arranged in rows (it was clear that Owen had not been working alone) but his team was nowhere to be seen.

Jack went upstairs. Most of the rooms were occupied by guests sleeping off the Retcon, but he went quietly down the hall to the end, where they had run out of guests before they'd run entirely out of rooms.

And he wasn't wrong. The rest of Torchwood Three were piled on the bed in the last empty room: shoes were off, jackets too, but otherwise they'd just rolled together on a bed that was meant for two but really wasn't big enough for three. 

Jack approached quietly.

Owen was on the outer edge, with Tosh in the middle -- her arm was thrown over his waist, and Ianto's arm around her, with his hand tangled in the fabric of Owen's T-shirt. 

At Jack's approach, Owen's eyes cracked open and he raised his head. He, at least, wasn't asleep, of course. The other two looked dead to the world. Owen made a slight, annoyed attempt to unknot Ianto's hand and gave up.

"Phones are sorted," he whispered, looking up at Jack. "Figured this lot could have a kip upstairs 'til you came back with the car." He grinned a little, and there was a flash of the old Owen in his eyes, the sharp edges. "Shove us over, cop a feel -- there's still a little room next to Ianto over there."

It was ... tempting. But there was a lot to be done back at Torchwood: reports to file, phones to scan, Rift activity to check, Myfanwy and a lot of Weevils to feed. Jack shook his head, and when Owen showed signs of sitting up and dislodging the other two, shook his head again and pushed him back down.

"You're tired." It was true; he didn't know _how_ Owen got tired, but he had figured out by now that Owen actually did, and right now Owen was nearly gray with it. Maybe the energy that animated him wore down and had to be replenished somehow. "Stay here. I'm going to run back to the Hub and take care of things there."

"You're human too, you know," Owen said. He shifted slightly so that he could prop himself on his elbow. His bandaged hand lay across the pillow. "As your doctor, I'm ordering you to get some rest."

"And as your _boss_ , I'm telling you the same."

Owen rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded vaguely like, "Wanker."

Jack scooped up a duvet they'd shoved off the bed and pulled it over their legs. Tosh stirred a little and snuggled into Owen, and that seemed to do it; he rolled his eyes again but lay back down and turned his face into her hair, his hand settling against her hip and his arm twining with Ianto's. Ianto still had hold of Owen's shirt, his arm bridging Tosh, pulling the three of them together.

Jack tucked the duvet down on the opposite side of the bed, and leaned over to brush his lips against Ianto's temple and the corner of his mouth. Owen was curled up against Tosh, but his eyes were half open, watching Jack -- who smiled at him, and reached to brush a hand lightly over Tosh's hair. "Keep an eye on them for me," he whispered.

"Always," Owen whispered back, and it was, for a rarity, utterly sincere, without sarcasm or deflection.

Jack left them there, trailing his hand over Ianto's arm. He turned back in the doorway to look at them, as if he could capture them all in a snapshot, like the ones he kept in a box. Gwen was the missing piece, of course -- the missing figure in the picture whose presence was implied by every move the others made, because her wedding was the reason why they were all here. 

All of them together, a new complete _something_ that had grown together while he was gone, but opened up willingly to let him back in.

His beautiful team.

He touched his fingers to his mouth, still tingling with the warmth of Ianto's skin, smelling of Ianto's cologne and Tosh's perfume ... and then went quietly downstairs through the sleeping house. He gathered the phones and scooped up a handful of confetti along the way, to take back with him to the Hub.

Sometimes life had a little glitter in it, and those were the times that made the dark days worth it.


End file.
